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They won’t stop until she’s dead.And if I made it, how many others were already in the ranks, lying low?

I looked around the crowd, trying to catch even a single person’s gaze, but none of them dared to pull their eyes from the blood bath.

Does that make them more suspicious?What if they were just putting on a show? Acting as if they were truly a part of the family, only to try and stab the princess in the heart.

All of them looked suspicious to me. The voices in the back of my mind kept criticizing them, pulling apart their appearancesand trying to remember if I’d ever seen them in the palace before this.

I am missing something. It’s been happening right under my nose, and they were going to try to kill her. Princess Aurelia can’t die. Not after everything I’ve done to help her. She can’t. I won’t let it. Not over my dead bod?—

“Reel it in,” Cedar whispered, her body much closer than I remembered. Her words were enough to stop me from spiraling and shock me back into my body.

Vesper knows how to end it.She had warned me. She hadwarnedme, and I hadn’t listened. It was my fault. They were dying needlessly because of me. The princess was in danger because of me.

I needed to end it.

They were already cleaning up the bodies. People around us were yelling, chanting, calling for more revenge.

The king had them right where he wanted them. My gaze traveled to him, but his eyes were already on me. He saw right through me. I could feel it.He knows.

We were surrounded. It didn’t matter if it was her father or the organization.

There is only one way out.

Aurelia’s hand found mine and squeezed. Cedar was by my side, her arm brushing across mine.

The witch knew… But did the princess? Did she know what I was about to do?

As I looked into her eyes, I knew she didn’t. I knew that she still had hope.

Hope that I would have to crush.

I was spiraling. Panicking. I had never felt so uncontrolled in my life.

I had always had a plan. Had been following a specific path my entire life and never veered off of it.

Until I met Aurelia.

Until I decided that I needed to save her. And there was no looking back after that.

My father sent me here thinking that maybe I would change my mind. That maybe his beatings would have reminded me of what was important.

But they had only reinforced the same idea.

The organization is cruel, violent, and will stop at nothing to see the end of their prophecy.

The universe had been telling me this. Yelling it at me the entire time. Through Cedar. Through Princess Aurelia’s father. Through my own fucking experiences.

I had to end it. And I was the only one who could.

Cedar’s words from that night played over and over in my head.

She has to complete the prophecy. She has to complete the prophecy. She has to complete the prophecy.

She pitied me, I could see it in her face. But that didn’t make the realization of what I had to do any less painful.

I have to do it. I have to kill Aurelia.

There were generations and generations of trained killers coming for her. Not only had one gotten past the king, but she had almost gotten past me as well. Who was to say there wouldn’t be more?